The Flaming Jewel

After a moment Quintana looked around at Picquet: "So. He is dead. Yes?"

Picquet shrugged: "Since noon, mon capitaine."

"Comment?"

"How shall I know. It was the fire, perhaps, -- green wood or wet -- it is no matter now. ... I said to him, `Pay attention, Henri; your wood makes too much smoke.' To me he reply I shall go to hell. ... Well, there was too much smoke for me. I arise to search for wood more dry, when, crack! -- they begin to shoot out there----" He waved a dirty hand toward the forest.

"`Bon,' said I, `Clinch, he have seen your damn smoke!'

"`What shall I care?' he make reply, Henri Beck, to me. `Clinch he shall shoot and be damn to him. I cook me my dejeuner all the same.'

"I make representations to that Johnbull; he say to me that I am a frog, and other injuries, while he lay yet more wood on his sacre fire.

"Then crack! crack! crack! and zing-gg! -- whee-ee! come the big bullets of Clinch and his voyous yonder.

"`Bon,' I say, `me, I make my excuse to retire.'

"Then Henri Beck he laugh and he say, `Hop it, frog!' And that is all he has find time to say, when crack! spat! Bien droit he has it -- tenez, mon capitaine -- here, over the left eye! ... Like a beef surprise he go over, crash! thump! And like a beef that dies, the air bellows out from his big lungs----"

Picquet looked down at the dead comrade in sort of weary compassion for such stupidity.

"-- So he pass, this ros-biff goddam Johnbull. ... me, I roll him in there. ... Je ne sais pas pourquoi. ... Then I put out the fire and leave."

Quintana let his sneering glance rest on the head a moment, and his thin lip curled immemorial contempt for the Anglo-Saxon.

Then he divested himself of the basket-pack which he had stolen from the Fry boy.

"Alors," he said calmly, "it has been Mike Clinch who shoot my frien' Beck. Bien."

He threw a cartridge into the breech of his rifle, adjusted his ammunition belt en bandouliere, carelessly.

Then, in a quiet voice: "My frien' Picquet, the time has now arrive when it become ver' necessary that we go from here away. Done -- I shall no go kill me my frien' Mike Clinch."

Picquet, unastonished, gave him a heavy, bovine look of inquiry.

Quintana said softly: "Me, I have enough already of this damn woods. Why shall we starve here when there lies our path?" He pointed north; his arm remained outstretched for a while.